So Tampa Bay Buccaneers are the super bowl champions and fair to say, convincing super bowl champions.
Tom Brady’s seventh Super bowl ring, and to be fair this one he probably deserves the most, having picked the majority of the Buccaneers team.
Kansas City Chiefs made short work of last year’s final, but it was total role reversals in 2021, Brady’s Buccaneers more than dominant over the full game.
While Tampa Bay write the headlines with their 31-9 victory, I can’t get over the fact; that I was in bed before 4am. The good old Super bowl Sunday’s when you would crawl into bed around 4.30am, having not really made sense of the game you watched!
There was a time in the 1980’s when super bowl fever gipped Ireland. Super bowl parties were the norm for thousands, up until the early hours with beer, burgers and hotdogs basking in this American day!
The beginning of this 80’s phenomena was spurred on by Channel 4, having launched in 1982, their remit to cover more off main stream topics then what made the airwaves on BBC or ITV.
American football joined the C4 line-up nearly immediately. Ex-pats, wannabe American’s, even those who had a half a clue about the game jumped into the shows.
The super bowl party night became much like line dancing in the early 90’s a flash in the pan, however it was some flash in the pan.
American football became such a hit on channel 4, that channel two in Ireland, RTE Two that is, also made a jump into the lime light.
As such remembered on the Killianm2 youtube channel, a home to some of the crazy British and Irish Television history.
The 1986 RTE coverage of the Super bowl included the no less esteemed American football experts Dickie Rock and Dermot Morgan.
The late Brendan O’Reilly host, assisted by Myles Dungan with a Super bowl party et-al in full swing during the broadcast.
O’Reilly at one stage asking Rock, “What you up to these days Dickie?” before immediately cutting out the legendary showband man with “we have to leave it there and re-join the broadcast!” Time-outs being a whole new concept to Brendan O’Reilly.
Channel 4’s inception and broadcast of American Football brought the sport to a whole new audience. It reached its plinth most probably in December 1985 when English soccer went off the TV screens.
The first big argument with sports rights in Britain taking place as English soccer dons haggled over the correct price for TV rights with BBC and ITV.
Then Match of the day presenter Des Lynam, later quipped “more people knew who the fridge was then Gary Lineker”. Lynam lamenting to this day the TV football coverage ban as football’s worst move.
Alas by the time of the early to mid-90’s all things American football and super bowl parties had slid down the hill. Even allowing for Sky Sports and Channel 4 to now share their American football coverage.
When I moved to secondary school, our P.E teacher was the famous imported basketballer Jerome Westbrooke.
One of the appealing glows of Mr. Westbrooke’s class was the knowledge that American football training would be standard on entry.
Alas, the glitz and glamour of the Super bowl was nowhere to be seen, after the basic skills of the game were ran through, came the hurting knowledge that tackling wasn’t allowed.
So ended any real interest that had taken place in American football and much to the dismay of the super bowl party fans, the new sport experiment was put to bed, replaced with Gaelic football, soccer, cross country running, tag rugby and swimming.
Surprisingly the arrival of social media seemed to propel American football back into the main stream.
Not so much the return of the phenome, as much as to highlight the inner circle of Irish American football fans, now tweeting away as the Sunday night oil burned low into the wee small hours.
People I knew from a wide variety of sports from Gaelic Games to cycling, rugby and soccer would suddenly and passionately start tweeting late at night about Tom Brady, the New England Pats or the Seahawks wide receiver.
In some ways the super bowl parties of the 80’s may have died out by 1990, but likened to the history of US soccer where the 1970’s experiment was seen as a failure.
Yes Pele, Beckenbauer, Best, Cruyff lined out for US soccer teams through the 70’s, yet the famed North American Soccer League died a death by the mid-80s.
Although in death can come rebirth and to many in the USA; the now 25-year-old Major League Soccer, was born from the ashes of the NASL.
There was no guacamole dip, hamburgers, hot dogs or Budweiser’s rolled out at Super bowl parties last night, covid-19 ensured that.
The super bowl parties will return in 2022, probably with those who watched their parents late night super bowl party in the 80’s as organisers.
